Teradata
Analysis of data warehousing giant Teradata. Related subjects include:
Teradata really means that those 100+ appliances are in PRODUCTION
I was misremembering. It turns out that when Teradata said it had over 100 appliances “in production”, it meant that >100 hardware-based appliances are actually in production. If you add in the software-only “appliances,” and count test/development as well as true production, the total rises to >200.
I tried to get a finer breakdown out of Teradata on a disclosable basis, but failed. The ostensible reason is that public companies often don’t do that sort of thing without permission from the investor relations department, and Teradata’s marketers evidently haven’t felt a sense of urgency about getting permission to, for example, communicate how well just the 25xx series is doing.
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Market share and customer counts, Teradata | 1 Comment |
Teradata and Netezza are doing MapReduce too
Netezza told me a while ago that it planned to introduce MapReduce, and agreed yesterday this was no longer NDAed. Stephen Brobst of Teradata* let slip at XLDB that Teradata has MapReduce too, apparently implemented but not yet generally available.
I don’t have details in either case. Netezza and Teradata evidently aren’t taking MapReduce as seriously as Aster Data, or even Greenplum or Vertica. But MapReduce has become pretty much of a “checkmark” item for large-database analytic DBMS vendors even so.
*Technically, Brobst is not and never has been a Teradata employee — but he’s widely and correctly regarded as being “of Teradata” even so. 🙂
| Categories: Data warehousing, MapReduce, Netezza, Teradata | 6 Comments |
Teradata has over 100 appliances in production
I recently wrote that Teradata had gotten serious about appliance product lines, and had non-trivial sales figures for them. In a press release today, Teradata is now explicitly saying (emphasis mine):
Teradata now has more than 100 appliances in production, including the Data Mart Appliance 551, the Data Warehouse Appliance 2550, and the Extreme Data Appliance 1550, which complement the core platform, the Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse 5550.
The breakdowns on that are NDA, and anyhow I can’t find them immediately in my notes.* But if memory serves — while a lot of those appliances are used for test and development, a whole other lot of them are used to do actual production query-answering work. (Edit: Memory turned out to be wrong.) Read more
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Market share and customer counts, Teradata | 2 Comments |
Teradata highlights some analytic use cases
A couple of slides in my recent briefing on Teradata’s Active Enterprise Data Warehouse Story contained long lists of analytic use cases, at a finer level of granualarity than I’m focusing on for a September speaking tour. I think they’re interesting to pass along. Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehousing, Teradata | 2 Comments |
Teradata’s Active Enterprise Data Warehouse story
Teradata used to tell a one-size-fits-all Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) story. That’s no longer the case. Last year, Teradata introduced a range of products. I think Teradata is serious about selling its full product range, and by now has achieved buy-in from its sales force for that strategy. I base these beliefs on data points such as:
- Teradata says so, repeatedly and persuasively.
- At least in passing, Teradata cites non-trivial sales figures for the appliance product lines.
- Competitors are less unanimous in asserting that Teradata’s lower-end products are presented on just a bait-and-switch basis.
But that raises the question: How does Teradata pitch the advantages of its top-end product line these days? At least at the corporate level, the answer seems to focus less on the “EDW” concept than it used to, and more on “Active.” Teradata – which actually has been talking about “Active Data Warehousing” for about a decade — indeed calls its top-end 55xx series the “Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse.”
Teradata proudly told me that it has >100 customers who have truly adopted an “Active” EDW. When we discussed what that meant, supported by a whole lot of named examples, it became clear that “Active” data warehousing: Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehousing, Teradata | 6 Comments |
Teradata 13 focuses on advanced analytic performance
Last October I wrote about the Teradata 13 release of Teradata’s database management software. Teradata 13, which will be used across the various Teradata product lines, has now been announced for GCA (General Customer Availability)*. So far as I can tell, there were two main points of emphasis for Teradata 13:
- Performance (of course, performance is a point of emphasis for almost any release of any analytic DBMS product), especially but not only in the areas of aggregates, ETL (Extract/Transform/Load), and UDFs.
- UDFs (User Defined Functions), especially but not only in the areas of data mining and geospatial analysis.
To put it even more concisely, the focus of Teradata 13 is on advanced analytic performance, although there of course are some enhancements in simple query performance and in analytic functionality as well. Read more
“The Netezza price point”
Over the past couple of years, quite a few data warehouse appliance or DBMS vendors have talked to me directly in terms of “Netezza’s price point,” or some similar phrase. Some have indicated that they’re right around the Netezza price point, but think their products are superior to Netezza’s. Others have stressed the large gap between their price and Netezza’s. But one way or the other, “Netezza’s price” has been an industry metric.
One reason everybody talks about the “Netezza (list) price” is that it hasn’t been changing much, seemingly staying stable at $50-60K/terabyte for a long time. And thus Teradata’s 2550 and Oracle’s larger-disk Exadata configuration — both priced more or less in the same range — have clearly been price-competitive with Netezza since their respective introductions.
That just changed. Netezza is cutting its pricing to the $20K/terabyte range imminently, with further cuts to come. So where does that leave competitors?
- The Teradata 1550 is in the Netezza price range (still a little below, actually).
- Oracle basically has nothing price-competitive with Netezza.
- Microsoft has stated it plans to introduce Madison below the old DATAllegro price points; conceivably, that could be competitive with Netezza’s new pricing, although I haven’t checked as to how much it now costs simply to buy a lot of SQL Server licenses (which presumably would be a Madison lower bound, and might except for hardware be the whole thing, since Microsoft likes to create large product bundles).
- XtremeData just launched in the new Netezza price range.
- Troubled Dataupia is hard to judge. While on the surface Dataupia’s prices sound very low, you can’t use a Dataupia box unless you also have a brand-name DBMS (license and hardware) alongside it. That obviously affects total cost significantly.
- Kickfire seems unaffected, as it doesn’t and most likely won’t compete with Netezza (different database size ranges).
- For the most part, software-only vendors are free to adapt or not as they choose. Hardware prices generally don’t need to be over $10K/terabyte, and in some cases could be a lot less. So the question is how far they’re willing to discount their software.
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Dataupia, Exadata, Kickfire, Oracle, Pricing, Teradata, XtremeData | 14 Comments |
Netezza on concurrency and workload management
I visited Netezza Friday for what was mainly an NDA meeting. But while I was there I asked where Netezza stood on concurrency, workload management, and rapid data mart spin-out. Netezza’s claims in those regards turned out to be surprisingly strong.
In the biggest surprise, Netezza claimed at least one customer had >5,000 simultaneous users, and a second had >4,000. Both are household names. Other unspecified Netezza customers apparently also have >1,000 simultaneous users. Read more
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Netezza, Teradata, Theory and architecture, Workload management | 13 Comments |
My current customer list among the analytic DBMS specialists
(This is an updated version of an August, 2008 post.)
One of my favorite pages on the Monash Research website is the list of many current and a few notable past customers. (Another favorite page is the one for testimonials.) For a variety of reasons, I won’t undertake to be more precise about my current customer list than that. But I don’t think it would hurt anything to list the analytic/data warehouse DBMS/appliance specialists in the group. They are:
- Aster Data
- Greenplum
- Infobright
- Kickfire
- Kognitio
- Microsoft
- Netezza (my biggest client this year, probably, because of all the Enzee Universe appearances)
- Sybase
- Teradata
- Vertica
- Attivio, which may or may not be construed as being in the analytic DBMS business
- Clearpace, ditto
All of those are Monash Advantage members.
If you care about all this, you may also be interested in the rest of my standards and disclosures.
| Categories: About this blog, Aster Data, Data warehousing, Greenplum, Infobright, Kickfire, Microsoft and SQL*Server, Netezza, Sybase, Teradata, Vertica Systems | 4 Comments |
Netezza Q1 earning call transcript
I finally read the Netezza Q1 earnings call transcript, put out by Seeking Alpha. Highlights included:
- Netezza got 14 new-name accounts and 21 follow-on deals. Average sale in both groups was right around $1 million.
- The economy is tough, deals are slipping, and nobody knows for sure what will happen.
- Netezza’s main head-to-head competitors are Oracle and Teradata. Netezza claims good but not perfect win rates against each, but concedes that those vendors (especially Oracle) of course get other deals Netezza never sees.
- Netezza characterizes Teradata as offering its multiple product lines, trying to upsell many customers from cheaper to more expensive product lines, and being selectively aggressive about pricing. None of this is surprising to me.
- 80% of Netezza’s Q1 revenue, and perhaps even a higher fraction of new-name accounts, was in four vertical markets: “Digital media,” telecom, government, and financial services.
- Some time over the next few months, Netezza will give at least some more clarity about future products.
One tip for the Netezza folks, by the way, from this former stock analyst — you should never use the word “certainly” about a deal you haven’t closed yet. “Almost surely” could be OK, but “certainly” — well, it certainly was not the thing to say.